Creator, the first sacrificer and the sacrifice itself. It is perhaps owing to his close connection with ceremonial that enquiring and speculative minds felt Prajâpati not to be a final or satisfactory explanation of the universe. He is identified with Brahmâ, the active personal creator, and this later name gradually ousts the other but he does not, any more than Indra or Varuṇa, become the Âtman or supreme universal Being of the Upanishads. The principal Vedic deities are male and the few goddesses that are mentioned such as Ushas. the Dawn, seem to owe their sex to purely dramatic reasons. Greece and Rome as well as India felt it appropriate to represent the daybreak as a radiant nymph. But though in later times such goddesses as Durgâ assumed in some sects a paramount position, and though the Veda is familiar with the idea of the world being born, there are few traces in it of a goddess corresponding to the Great Mother, Cybele or Astarte. In an earlier period of Vedic studies many deities were identified with figures in the classical or Teutonic mythology chiefly on philological grounds but most of these identifications have now been abandoned. But a few names and figures seem to be found among both the Asiatic and European Aryans and to point to a common stock of ideas. Dyaus, the Sky God, is admittedly the same as Zeus and Jupiter. The Aśvins agree in character, though not in name, with the Dioscuri and other parallels are quoted from Lettish mythology. Bhaga, the bountiful giver, a somewhat obscure deity, is the same word as the Slavonic Bog, used in the general sense of God, and we find _deva_ in Sanskrit, _deus_ in Latin, and _devas_ in Lithuanian. Ushas, the Dawn, is phonetically related to [Greek: 'Êhôs] and Aurora who, however, are only half deities. Indra, if he cannot be scientifically identified with Thor, is a similar personage who must have grown out of the same stock of ideas. By a curious transference the Prophet Elias has in south-eastern Europe inherited the attributes of the thunder god and is even now in the imagination of the peasantry a jovial and riotous being who, like Indra, drives a noisy chariot across the sky.